Day 10 - 01/10/2019

  Choose-your-own-adventure games have been around for quite a while, but Black Mirror Bandersnatch applies the concept to the screens of movie streaming. Netflix constantly impresses with their originals, either in the form of series or films, and despite the competition, the medium by which a Black Mirror movie is applied is revolutionary by itself, regardless of any outside factor.

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  Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) is a kid in the 80's programming a game based on his favorite choose-your-own-adventure book. When presenting his work to Tuckersoft, a respectable gaming company, where meets a famous game developer, Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), and his boss, Mohan Tucker (Asim Chaudhry). From there on Stefan chooses his path, with interactions to both his father (Craig Parkinson) and therapist (Alice Lowe), as well as his deadline for the upcoming game: Bandersnatch.

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  To start out, the presentation of the decisions are well made and easy to understanding, initially presenting us simple everyday choices and slowly building it up. The themes brought up are quite involving, especially the ones involving Colin Ritman, that is by far the best performing member of the cast. Most of the endings are quite satisfying, each with their own subtleties, and the Black Mirror production makes it anything but forgettable. 

 

  Though much props have to be given for this outside of the box way of making a movie, especially a risky one when talking about the thirsty Black Mirror fans, some of the defects come across very clear. When compared to the depth of an RPG game, the story is quite weak and the limitations are stated outright as it goes by: "you can't control your future". Fionn Whitehead is not too charismatic and our journey of having to deal with him from beginning to end (often multiple times) can be quite tiring. The path to find a new ending is exhausting to say the least and the variety of the reviews are quite lame, with the only possible results being 0, 2.5 or 5 out of 5 stars. Finally, most likely done on purpose but for a reason I still quite can't find is how bad the acting of Stefan's mother is, being by far the worst character even with such small appearances. 

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  Innovation is something that can't be undermined, and with the debut of this movie-game being relatively successful with not much to base it on other than RPG games, Black Mirror Bandersnatch is rated at 7.2 out of 10 stones.